Archive for March 28th, 2008

How do you get to be an e-learning expert?

March 28th, 2008 by Graham Attwell

I had an interesting email from a student today: “Dear Professor”, it opened – I was flattered, “….I’m now applying to a PhD through the Fulbright Comission to study in U.S. Can you please advise me about the best PhDs that could help me become an eLearning expert? I’m interested in Educational research, but also in developing informatic skills.”

I know little of the US Doctoral system. But the more general question also flummoxed me. Is a Doctorate a good way to become an e-learning expert. Or do you just have to go out there and do it. Or,  should we be developing higher education degrees to train pople in e-learning? Is there an occupational profile for an e-learning expert? Or is it a hybrid made up of several different occupational profiles?

I will pass on any good comments to the student who emailed me.

IBM Centre occupied by protesting avatars

March 28th, 2008 by Graham Attwell

ibmsl

Photo: RSU: Some rights reserved

Caption: ‘IBM workers and friends protest at the IBM Business Center in virtual world Second Life, amidst concerns that IBM are outsourcing thousands of staff without proper consultation or securities.’

Protesters occupied the IBM Centre for two hours. It greatly heartens me to see such creative and socially constructive use of new technologies. For more about yesterdays demonstration see the IBM Virtual Protest Official Blog.

Who reads this blog?

March 28th, 2008 by Graham Attwell

We do have an account with Google analytics to provide us with details about who is accessing the Pontydysgu web site but I have ot admit I nearly never look. It is just too detaied for me and as far as I cans ee it does not pick up feedreader access. Wea lso have a plug in called statz (it is German) which provides some quick and dirty figures. It provides daily statistics on hosts – on where people are coming to the site from. That used ot be dominated by Google. But not any more. Since the start of the year there has been a steady increase in referrals from Yodao. Yodao – which translates as “there is a path” – allows users to search for Web pages, images and blogs and to translate Chinese into English.

sadly we have never had a comment form anyone in China although there have been a few trackbacks. I would love to hear from anyone accessing the site form China – what are you looking for, is the site helpful and how is e-learning being developed in China?

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    News Bites

    From a Jisc press release:

    Over 14,000 items of archived TV footage from 17 European countries are now available via the EUscreen online portal for teaching, research and general interest.

    EUscreen – the result of a collaboration between 36 partners across Europe – provides a rich insight into Europe’s television heritage with content dating from the 1920s to the present day.

    The portal includes rare footage and commentary on key events in history, including a 1962 interview with Martin Luther King about racial discrimination in the US.

    John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway and principal investigator on the EUscreen project, said: “This is a valuable resource for anyone interested in social history or indeed TV history, as it brings together tens of thousands of clips from across Europe. The portal is available to anyone (not only academics) and it is very easy to get absorbed and spend hours browsing all of the footage.”

    The expansive footage has also proved popular as a learning aid for foreign language students, with clips available in 14 languages.

    By the end of September 2012, there will be around 30,000 items of digital content freely available on the portal as the European providers continue to add carefully selected material.

    Explore the EUscreen footage


    Open online seminar

    Jisc are hosting an open, online seminar on ‘Making Assessment Count (MAC)’ on Friday 3rd Feb – 1-2pm. The presenters are Professor Peter Chatterton (Daedalus e-World Ltd) and Professor Gunter Saunders (University of Westminster).

    The mailing for the seminar says” “The objective of Making Assessment Count is primarily to help students engage more closely with the assessment process, either at the stage where they are addressing an assignment or at the stage when they receive feedback on a completed assignment. In addition an underlying theme of MAC is to use technology to help connect student reflections on their assessment with their tutors. To facilitate the reflection aspect of MAC a web based tool called e-Reflect is often used. This tool enables the authoring of self-review questionnaires by tutors for students. On completion of an e-Reflect questionnaire a report is generated for the student containing responses that are linked to the options the student selected on the questionnaire.”

    You can find out more ans sign up for the seminar at  http://jiscmac.eventbrite.co.uk/


    EC-TEL 2012

    The EC-TEL 2012: Seventh European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 21st Century Learning for 21st Century Skills takes place on 18-21 September 2012 at Saarbrücken in Germany.

    The focus for the conference includes:

    - How can schools prepare young people for the technology-rich workplace of the future?
    - How can we use technology to promote informal and independent learning outside traditional educational settings?
    - How can we use next generation social and mobile technologies to promote informal and responsive learning?

    The deadline for proposals is April 2.


    Visitors and Residents

    David White (University of Oxford) and Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC) have been attracting quite a stir with their JISC-funded work on Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?, being undertaken as part of the Developing Digital Literacies programme webinar series.

    Slides, audio and a recording of the Blackboard Collaborate session where they presented some of the findings of their work can be found at http://bit.ly/jiscdiglitvr.


    ECER 2010

    The keynotes, videos, radio shows and interviews from the ECER 2010 Conference in Helsinki:

    On the ECER 2010 website.

    Taccle handbook for teachers order form

    Here you find the Taccle handbook for teachers order form.

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